1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to computer vision and imaging systems, and more particularly, to a system and method for segmentation of 3D medical structures, e.g., organs, aneurysms and brain tumors, using robust ray propagation.
2. Description of the Related Art
The segmentation of three-dimensional (3D) structures in CT (computerized tomography) and MR (magnetic resonance) images is an inherently difficult and time consuming problem. The accurate localization of object surfaces is influenced by the presence of significant noise levels, generated through partial-volume effects and by image acquisition devices. In addition, the processing in 3D space implies an increased computational complexity, which makes impractical the 3D extension of most two-dimensional (2D) segmentation algorithms.
Deformable models have been popular for segmentation of 3D medical images. These approaches can produce good segmentation results if the initialization is done properly. In general, deformable models work well if they are initialized close to object boundaries and if they are almost symmetrically away from boundaries. However, such initialization of deformable models is typically a difficult task because a 3D model must be created inside 3D data by using a 2D display device. In addition, the current deformable model approaches are computationally expensive. This is due to the additional dimension in the case of level set methods, or expensive reinitialization of parameters in the case of explicit surface evolution techniques.